


I Heard You’ve Been Missing Me

by petrodactyl352



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Crack Treated Seriously, Established Trevor/Alucard but they're just fuckbuddies, F/M, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M, Yet again this takes place in San Fran just deal with my obsession with the place ok, flangst, for now, idiots to lovers, morosexual ot3 because thats how we roll, wink wink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:53:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24113113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petrodactyl352/pseuds/petrodactyl352
Summary: It all started when he overheard the werewolf frat guys talking about someone—a local magician—giving them trouble; spray-painting sigils on the frat house, casting warding spells around apartments, smoking cloves and incense near vents. Trevor hadn’t thought it was that big a deal, so he decides to check it out.But when he meets Sypha Belnades, it turns out she’s a far bigger deal then he’d bargained for.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Sypha Belnades, Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont, Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades, Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades
Comments: 17
Kudos: 133





	I Heard You’ve Been Missing Me

**Author's Note:**

> *flashes back to a little more than a year ago when i would literally churn out fics every single week like some sort of fucking slot machine* oh. oh no. oh dear god. here we are again. hello everyone. i'm really proud of this even if it's actually very dumb i'm sorry please validate me. 
> 
> title from 'rumour has it' by the one and only adele.

“A magician?”

Adrian sounds—skeptical. A little sardonic, maybe. Wary, even, though Trevor knows it’s not because of the words but rather the implication behind them. He sits up beside Trevor with a creak of bedsprings, the sheets falling from his shoulders to settle around his hips. Trevor has to crane his head up to look at him now, an arm crooked behind his head from where he’s sprawled across the bed. He decidedly avoids Trevor’s eye, busying himself combing through his tangled hair with his fingers and away from his face. 

“Yeah, a magician.” Trevor stretches with a sigh, feeling the kinks in his back and shoulders loosen with audible cracks. “I overheard a couple of the boys down at the werewolf frat bar talking about it yesterday. Stakeout,” he explains at Adrian’s quizzically raised brow. “Some rogues I needed to take care of.”

“So what did they say?” He glances down at Trevor, starting to gather his hair up into a knot at the back of his head. He looks and sounds remarkably put-together for someone who’d been absolutely _rawed_ by Trevor in bed like ten minutes ago, infuriatingly so. It’s probably his dhampir stamina, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. Especially when Trevor is still mostly limp and also still trying to remember how speech works. 

“Nothing too bad,” he says. “Just that they’ve been giving a couple of the frat guys a little trouble. Spray-painting sigils on the walls of the frat house, smoking cloves and incense at the café, casting warding spells around apartments and shit like that.”

“And you want to look into it,” Adrian says. It isn’t a question—he knows Trevor a little too well to need to ask. He swings his legs out of bed, standing and making his way to the bathroom, apparently and seemingly uncaring that he doesn’t have a stitch of clothing on. He leaves the door open behind him as he disappears into the bathroom, and a few seconds later Trevor hears the shower sputter on. Steam rapidly fills up the little space, fogging up the mirror Trevor can see from where he’s still lying in bed. 

“Could use your help,” Trevor calls, hauling himself up onto his elbows and shaking his hair away from his eyes. He blinks the blurriness out of his eyes, looking around and surveying the state of his room. There are clothes and weapons strewn everywhere, his desk chair is overturned and there’s a mug of God-knows-how-old coffee sitting on the windowsill. He’s also left his printer on, and it’s vibrating gently but incessantly from beneath a pile of papers in the corner. 

His walls are covered in cutouts from papers and magazines, articles and pictures and scanned pages from library books. Most of them are connected with paper clips and rubber bands stretching between them, and there are countless brightly-colored post-it notes stuck all over the place with notes scrawled on them by Trevor’s hand. Adrian always turns his nose up and sniffs at how messy and disorganized the whole thing is every single time he comes over, but Trevor knows exactly what’s where, and why. 

He rolls out of bed, stretching his arms above his head with a long breath. He glances at the table by the bed where his clock is supposed to be but isn’t—a brief search has him fishing it out from beneath the bed where he now vaguely remembers Adrian knocking it over sometime last night. He places it back onto the nightstand, where it blinks out at him, reading “3:18 AM” in bold, bright red. 

He heads to the bathroom, scrubbing his hands across his face. He wipes the steam off the mirror and peers into it at his own flushed face, blinking at himself wearily. The water is still running in the shower, and he can see Adrian’s blurry silhouette from behind the curtain. 

“And what makes you think I want to help you, Belmont?” he hears Adrian ask, his voice floating towards him from behind the shower curtain. Trevor rolls his eyes and grabs up his toothbrush, running it under the tap before sticking it in his mouth. “I have better things to do,” Adrian goes on. 

“Better things to do, sure.” Trevor spits, then straightens, splashing water onto his face. “Like what, sipping blood out of champagne flutes on the top floor of the 181 Fremont with your dad’s society friends?”

“Fuck off.” He hears a splash. “At least I don’t spend my weekends crawling through blood and shit in San Francisco’s underbelly with the scum of the city trying to kill everything I can reach with a whip.”

“And yet,” says Trevor, turning his head and examining a hickey Adrian had left on the side of his throat, “you seem happy enough to fuck me and get fucked _by_ me whenever you get the opportunity to.”

“Yes, well, you’re easy enough to look at,” Adrian says, sounding dismissive. “And it isn’t below my dignity to admit you’re good in bed, otherwise I wouldn’t be in your mess of an apartment every other week, would I?” He twitches the curtain aside, and a second later Adrian’s golden head insinuates from between the little crack, frowning at him. “You’re out of soap, Belmont.”

“I’m fucking flattered.” He plucks the bar of soap from beside the sink and tosses it to Adrian, who catches it before withdrawing behind the curtain again, pulling it shut. “So about that magician,” Trevor says, grabbing a pair of jeans from where they’re lying on top of the laundry basket and pulling them on. “You going to help or what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Adrian says vaguely. “Where do they live? Man, woman, neither, both?”

“No idea. They live just a block down from here, they’re a freshman at the university, which is why I’m only hearing about this now. Looks like they’ve been giving the wolves trouble for just about two weeks now.”

“Hm.” The shower shuts off, and he sees Adrian’s arm reach out and grab the towel hanging from the peg on the wall behind him. “Fine, I’ll come,” he says after a minute or so, pulling the shower curtain open and stepping out, the towel now wrapped around his waist. “But if it’s not worth my time then it’s going to be your fault.” He nudges Trevor out of the way with a foot and preens in front of the mirror, admiring his own flawless reflection. Trevor rolls his eyes, heading out of the bathroom and towards the bed. 

“You’re a piece of work, Țepeș, you know that?” He straightens the sheets out, stooping and picking up the duvet from where it’s lying crumpled up in a ball on the floor. “Sometimes I wonder why I even put up with you.”

“It’s because I’m pretty,” says Adrian without missing a beat, still in front of the mirror, now combing his hair. Trevor snorts, shaking his head. “And it’s also because of your dick,” Trevor calls back, folding the coverlet and draping it at the foot of the now-made bed. “Don’t forget your dick.”

“That too.” Adrian emerges from the bathroom, smirking all over his (admittedly _very_ pretty) face as he moves around the room, picking up his discarded clothes from where they’re scattered all over the floor. He makes a face at the wrinkles in his shirt before stuffing everything into his bag unceremoniously, then pulls out a new, spotless and wrinkle-free shirt and pants, flicking a bit of lint off the collar as he drops the bag at the foot of the bed along with the towel on his waist.

“I still can’t believe you bring _spare clothes_ over every time we fuck at my place,” Trevor mutters. “Just wear the same damn thing, what’s wrong with that—”

“Those clothes have spent the better part of the last four hours on your floor, Trevor,” Adrian says, his voice a little muffled as he yanks the new, clean shirt over his head. “I don’t even want to know when the last time you cleaned it was. God knows what kinds of unhygienic shit has spilled on it—if you make an inappropriate joke about that I will kill you. Do not doubt me.” He points a finger at Trevor as he opens his mouth, and he grins as he mimes zipping his lips with a finger. Adrian rolls his eyes. 

By the time Adrian has finished getting dressed into a plain black silk button-down shirt and what looks like the tightest pair of jeans Trevor has ever laid eyes on, Trevor is sitting at his desk, having righted his chair, peering at his laptop. Adrian leans over his shoulder, a casual hand braced on his back, and for some stupid reason the contact makes Trevor blush. He shouldn’t, especially considering the nature of their relationship; they’ve had this arrangement for months now, since the day he’d gotten shitfaced at the faerie bar downtown while tracking down a violent Nereid and had woken up in an unfamiliar apartment with a faceful of blond hair and several armfuls of fast-asleep dhampir. He hadn’t remembered much of the very drunk sex, but he’d still left his number on the bedside table before heading home. It must have been good though, because, surprisingly enough he’d actually gotten a call back, and ever since then it was either his place or Adrian’s. He doesn’t quite know if it’s irony or bad luck that he’s the fuckbuddy of Dracula’s son while being a Belmont, but at this point he’s too far gone to care. 

“I doubt you’re going to get any information off the university newspaper,” Adrian says, his breath tickling Trevor’s nape. He can smell the faint scent of his cologne, expensive and sharp. “Not if this has been going on for only a few weeks now.”

“Got to start somewhere, right?” He drums his fingers on the tabletop, frowning at the screen. “I haven’t even heard any complaints from the people living nearby—and plus I’ve probably seen them at least once or twice on campus if they’re a freshman. Looks like this magician is pretty discreet, but they’ve done enough to piss off the frat guys.”

“Well, it’s not hard to piss off the frat guys,” snorts Adrian. “Territorial assholes.”

“Don’t give me that werewolves-hate-vampires-and-vice-versa bullshit,” groans Trevor. “It clouds your judgement, and sometimes they’re not all that bad.”

“Like the time you dated one of the younger ones,” Adrian says, raising a smooth eyebrow. 

“That wasn’t this frat, that was a sorority,” Trevor reminds him, turning around and pointing a finger at him. “And she was nineteen. So I didn’t do anything illegal.”

“My, my.” Adrian smiles, widely enough for his fangs to flash, pearly white and deadly sharp. “A Belmont who consorts with the darker side of the city? Dating werewolves, fucking vampires, drinking at faerie bars…”

“They have better booze,” says Trevor with a dismissive wave. “And dating humans means explaining what I do and why I’m never there at night. It’s so much easier to just—you know.”

“Fuck vampires,” Adrian says, nodding.

Trevor laughs. “Dhampirs, technically.”

“Mmm.” He leans forward, gently biting at Trevor’s ear before withdrawing, standing up straight and slinging his bag over his shoulder. “Right. Call me when you’re ready to check out the magician situation, I’ll meet you at that bohemian coffee place around the corner.”

“See you.” He half-turns as Adrian leaves, and a few seconds later he hears the front door slam. He sighs, sitting back in the chair, staring and staring and staring at his screen but not really seeing it at all. Somewhere two floors below he hears the low purr of a car starting, hears the screech of tires against tarmac growing steadily more distant until it fades from the air entirely. He sighs, bracing his elbows on his desk and putting his face in his hands. He can still smell Adrian’s cologne where it lingers in the air, faint and not-quite faded. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, gritting his teeth. He knows it’s stupid to be having these thoughts—he has Adrian. He’s had Adrian for months now. So how can Trevor feel like he has him but also like he doesn’t have him at all?

* * *

“Two lattes, please.” He leans over the counter, fishing out his wallet and glancing up at the short, pretty barista who’s currently wielding a sharpie and blinking large blue eyes at him. “One peppermint, one matcha. Four shots in the peppermint.”

“Sure thing. Small, medium or large?”

“The biggest one you’ve got,” Trevor says absently, searching for change in his pockets. He hears the faint _ding_ of the price showing up on the screen and tosses the money onto the counter, where it’s swept up by the barista immediately. “They’ll be here in five,” she says, smiling at him. It cuts a dimple into her left cheek that’s actually pretty cute. “Take a seat.”

“Thanks.” He heads towards the table that he’d dumped his jacket on to save it, plunking himself down onto one of the seats. He pulls his phone out, sending Adrian his eighth text in the past five minutes, this one complete with about three hundred question marks and a couple of poop emojis for good measure. He knows Adrian sees the notifications but never bothers replying or even opening the chat up, so he makes sure to irritate him as much as he can to inspire an actual reply.

He hits enter, and just as the text sends with a soft _pop_ the door of the coffeeshop opens and Adrian walks in. He looks, as per usual, like a male model who just dropped by on the way back from a Vogue cover photoshoot, dressed in tailored white cigarette pants and a tight shirt the same color with a plunging neckline that ensures half his toned chest is on display, complete with designer boots and sunglasses, which he pushes up into his curled, flawless platinum hair as he struts inside the café. Thrown over it all is a beige peacoat that falls in elegant folds till his ankles, one that’s loosely draped over his shoulders. He spots Trevor, then makes his way towards him, sitting across from him and raising an eyebrow. 

“Seven texts,” he says. “Really, Belmont?”

Trevor hears a faint _ping_.

Adrian looks down at his phone and sighs. “Eight texts. I got your call, you know.”

“Hey, if you don’t reply I’m going to assume you didn’t see it,” Trevor says cheerfully. “Plus, I’ve been waiting here for forever.”

“Our coffees haven’t even come yet. You’ve been here ten minutes,” Adrian says with a roll of his eyes, resting his elbows on the table and leaning forward. His eyes shimmer mirthfully under the sunlight that slants through the windows beside their table, a bright unearthly gold. His lips quirk up into a little smirk. “I’ve just shown up and you haven’t even kissed me hello yet, Trevor,” he says softly, the tip of his boot running teasingly up the inside of Trevor’s leg beneath the table. He refrains from yelping undignifiedly with difficulty, settling for clenching his teeth so hard he thinks he hears a crack. “I’m wounded,” Adrian goes on, fluttering his absurdly long lashes at Trevor coquettishly. 

“You’re not my boyfriend, Țepeș,” he hears himself say, but a second later he’s leaning forward anyway, tilting his head to press a small, soft kiss to Adrian’s lips. He feels a startled little puff of air against his mouth before he kisses Trevor back, those long lashes feathering against the tops of his cheeks as he closes his eyes. He barely has time to register that Adrian tastes of toothpaste and cold wind, and the familiar scent of his cologne is stronger now, flooding Trevor’s mind when he inhales—before he hears an awkward little cough and breaks away from Adrian hastily, turning his head. 

The barista from earlier steps forward and places two large steaming cups of coffee on their table, her cheeks pink. He sees Adrian visibly trying to hide a smile as he leans back, allowing her to move forward. “Thanks,” he says as she turns, and she gives a quick little nod before making herself scarce, still pink in the face. The moment she’s out of earshot Adrian bursts out laughing, reaching out to grab his latte. “Your _face_ , Belmont,” he says, still giggling. “My god, you looked just about ready to combust.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Trevor reaches out for his own latte, taking a sip of the scalding hot coffee. “You’re the one who asked me to kiss you.”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to actually go ahead and do it.” His long elegant fingers wrap around his cup as he lifts it to his lips. “It was quite sweet, actually,” he says as he lowers his cup, chasing a stray bit of green foam at the corner of his mouth with his tongue. 

Trevor tries as hard as he can not to blush, but he’s pretty sure he ends up blushing anyway as he looks away, not meeting Adrian’s eye. He takes another sip of coffee to hide it, saying nothing in reply. He gazes out at the sparse traffic outside, at the few pedestrians milling about in the Sunday morning sunshine. It’s lazy almost, buttery sunlight and empty streets and peppermint coffee on his tongue and Adrian sitting across from him. 

“You think our elusive magician will be home?” Adrian’s voice asks, breaking him out of his reverie. He turns to look at him again, blinking the green blobs the sun outside had seared into his vision out of his eyes. He shrugs, gulping more coffee. “Probably. It’s Sunday, where else would they be?”

He only nods in reply, taking a delicate sip of his latte. “How far is their place from here?”

“Couple blocks, no more.”

Adrian stands, grabbing up his unfinished coffee as he does. “Let’s walk, then,” he says, half-turning towards the door. “I need to get some sun, and it’s nice out.”

Which is how, five minutes later they’re both walking side by side on the pavement, Adrian with his designer shades still pushed up on his head, oddly enough. The sunlight catches his hair, and it seems to glow from the inside out, turning from pale gold to bright platinum. Trevor can’t help but think he looks especially gorgeous in the sunlight; his inhumanly pale skin looks warmer, more—well, more human—and his eyes sparkle like a crisp glass of white wine catching a spark and turning into a gilded supernova.

He turns his head to look at Trevor, blinking. “What?”

Trevor frowns. “What?”

“You were just staring at me.” He sips his coffee, squinting at Trevor against the sun. “Have I got something on my face?”

“No,” says Trevor, and then almost against his will he says, “It’s nothing. You just—you look beautiful.”

Adrian blushes, and it’s startlingly visible against his pallor. It’s also maddeningly endearing. “Oh,” is all he says, and he sounds pleased and shy at the same time. “Thanks.” His own eyes sweep critically up Trevor’s length, lingering on the strategic rips in his jeans and every single place his shirt clings to his body before coming to rest on his face, and he’s smiling just a little. “You don’t look too bad yourself, Belmont. This shirt could be tighter, though.” He runs a slender finger up Trevor’s chest, hooking it beneath his collar. “Actually, I think I’d prefer it if you weren’t wearing it at all.”

“Mmhmm.” He hides his grin by taking a generous swallow of coffee, and Adrian draws his hand back, pushing his sunglasses down so that they’re perched on his nose, hiding his eyes. “My car is parked a block from the café,” he says, tossing his own now-empty coffee cup into a trashcan as they pass it. “We’ll head over to my penthouse after we meet this magician.”

“What, one fuck this weekend wasn’t enough for the horny vampire?”

“Not when you’re dressed like that it isn’t.”

“This isn’t even my most slutty outfit,” Trevor protests. “This is like the fourth sluttiest thing I own. Maybe the fifth.”

“Well, it’s slutty enough for me.” They turn the corner, and Trevor grabs Adrian’s arm, bringing him to a stop in front of one of the apartments that lines the street in identical boxes of gray and blue. “Here,” he says. “This is where they live. Third floor, sixth house.”

“Let’s just get this over with, then,” says Adrian, turning into the lobby. It’s small and cramped and deserted, the desk empty and the fan on the ceiling turning listlessly. There’s an elevator in the corner, looking just as small and cramped and deserted, the yellow light inside flickering and the walls grimy. They ditch it and take the stairs, every other one of which creaks. They emerge on the third floor corridor, which doesn’t look promising either; the walls are peeling and the ceiling is dripping in more than a few places.

“Who the fuck lives here, Tyler Durden?” Trevor makes a face, eyeing the puddles gathering on the floor and the doodles all over the cracked walls. He kicks a stray bit of crumbling floor away, sending it skittering into the shadows of the stairwell. “This place makes my apartment look like the Ritz.”

“Sixth house, you said?” Adrian asks, drawing up to the right door. “This had better be worth my time and my Chanel boots,” he mutters, and then he raises a fist and knocks. They wait five seconds, then ten, then twenty. 

No answer. 

Trevor tries next, knocking longer and louder, buzzing the doorbell and even leaning on it for a full thirty seconds before abandoning it. Still they’re answered only by silence, punctuated only by the steady dripping of the ceiling a few paces away and the faint strains of traffic that reaches them from the streets below. 

“Maybe this magician knows who we are,” Adrian says, moving over to the window at the far end of the corridor and poking his head out of it. “And that’s why they’re not opening the door.”

“Maybe.” Trevor sizes the door up, stepping back. “You think I should break it down?”

Adrian moves back inside, shutting the window behind him as he does. “I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? We’ll have to pay for damage, but beyond that, not much.”

“Well, here goes then.” He takes a step back, half-turning so that his shoulder is angled towards the direct center of the door. He hunches his shoulders and has taken exactly one step forward when a loud _ding_ and the rattle of the ancient elevator grate opening sounds out, making him stop short. He and Adrian turn in unison, Trevor still half-turned towards the door, just as a short, petite figure steps out of the elevator and into the corridor. 

“What the fuck are you people doing in front of my house?” demands a high, accented voice. It sounds weirdly familiar, and a second later when the person stomps right up to him and Adrian he realizes why. 

“You!” the barista from the coffeeshop says accusingly when she catches sight of their faces, glaring at them. “Who are you people? What are you doing here?”

“Uh,” Trevor says, brilliantly. “We—”

“You,” the girl says again, turning towards Adrian and completely ignoring Trevor. “You’re a vampire.” Her voice drops when she says it, and she takes a step back, raising a hand in a strange gesture—her pinky and index finger extended and her other three fingers curled into her palm. “What do you want?” She glances at Trevor, her large blue eyes suspicious. “Are you his blood bag?”

“What the fuck—no,” Trevor says, indignant. “I’m a hunter. And he’s only half-vampire.”

She shakes her head. “Why are you here?” She glances between them. “Were you following me? Is this about that stupid werewolf frat house thing? Look, it was one fucking rune, and it was just a harmless prank. They ransacked my apartment when I moved in, it was just to get them back. It was just a—”

“Hold the fuck up.” Trevor holds up a hand. “Just—wait a second. Stop.”

She shuts her mouth, but her arm is still raised. He shares a glance with Adrian, who just raises an eyebrow at him. “We’re not here about the frat house thing—not entirely, anyway,” he says, turning away from Trevor and towards the girl. “We’ve heard a bit about you and your… antics, and we’re just here to investigate.”

The girl lowers her arm with a sigh, fumbling for something in her messenger bag—keys, Trevor realizes a second later when she draws them out, fitting it to the doorknob and turning it. The door pops open and she pulls it wider, gesturing resignedly. “You might as well come in,” she says. “I suppose I’ve got some explaining to do.”

* * *

“Tea?” the girl—Sypha, as she’d told them her name was a moment ago—calls as they sit down in her cluttered little living room on beanbags that surround the tiny coffee table. There are candles on every available surface everywhere the eye can see; half-melted to the coffee table, lined on the floors and on shelves, and some even dripping from the walls, where they’ve solidified halfway to the floor. A few on the coffee table are still burning, giving off the strong smell of citrus. 

Sypha had dropped her bag unceremoniously the moment they’d walked in, slamming the door hard behind them (“It jams in the heat,” she’d explained when they’d both jumped at the sound of it) and telling them to make themselves comfortable as she’d moved deeper into the little apartment. Which, from what Trevor can see, is not as terrible as the outside. 

“No, thanks,” Trevor calls back, and he and Adrian share another glance. He doesn’t think Sypha is what either of them had expected, and he still doesn’t quite know what to think. 

“I knew you wouldn’t want tea, I was just being a good host,” her voice says, and a second later she walks back into the living room, holding a plate, which she deposits onto a spot on the table that isn’t full of candles with a rattle. He peers down at it, expecting there to be something important on it, some book or a charm—but instead it’s piled with ginger cookies, one of which Sypha swipes as she sits down cross-legged on a beanbag opposite them, nibbling on it as she gazes at them. They both stare back. 

She looks, Trevor supposes, the way a young magician in her freshman year of university probably should. She’s wearing denim cutoffs and an old oversized baby blue hoodie, the sleeves and bottom half of which she’s evidently sawed off herself, judging by its ragged hem. It stops just shy of her sternum, showing off the curling edge of a tattoo that twines up her side, evidently a vine or root of some kind. Her skinny wrists are looped all over with bracelets—silver, bronze, iron—till her elbows. She’s wearing rings on every one of her slender fingers, and he recognizes a couple of traditional warding crystals clutched in their claws—amethyst, jasper, fire agate. She’s wearing about eight necklaces, all of varying lengths, from chokers to chains that reach past the hem of her cropped hoodie. Her strawberry-blonde curls are cut short, and they stick out all around her head like she’s just stuck her fingers into an electrical socket.

All in all, if he saw her walking on the street, he’d probably think she was a magician. Or a witch. Or both. 

“Some light?” she asks, and without waiting for them to answer she raises a finger and blows gently, sending a concentrated beam of fire towards the coffee table, where it races from candle to candle, lighting every single one. She sits back, finishing off her cookie innocuously as Trevor and Adrian stare first at the candles, then at her. 

She brushes a few crumbs off her lips, crossing her arms and looking between them, her gaze unreadable. “So,” she says. “I’m sure you probably want to know all about my little feud with the werewolf frat guys. I’m also pretty sure that they told you I’m a menace and I need to be evicted and I ‘disturb the peace’.” She snorts a little, as if to herself. “Territorial assholes,” she mutters—the exact same thing Adrian had said earlier. 

Adrian is smiling a little, and as Trevor catches his eye again he mouths, _I like this girl._ Trevor rolls his eyes. 

“You’re a Speaker Magician,” Adrian says, and it’s not a question. He glances at the walls, lined with shelves and crammed with books of all shapes and sizes, and more than a few of them in languages he doesn’t even recognize. He looks back at Sypha, who shrugs as if to say, _You got me._ “Yeah,” she says. “But I’m only here to go to college, I swear.”

“And the frat guys?” Trevor raises an eyebrow. 

She makes a face. “I wasn’t as inconspicuous as I tried to be,” she says. “I’ve never really hid it all my life, since I was homeschooled by my grandfather in Seville, but now I have to actively exercise caution so that nobody knows what I am. But the werewolf guys noticed anyway. And because they’re assholes, they trashed my apartment and took half my stuff while I was at class.”

She leans forward and plucks another cookie off the plate on the coffee table, narrowly avoiding a candle. “Anyway, I got pissed. And they acted with offense unprovoked, so I had every right to go to their stupid frat house down the street and spray paint a couple of runes on their wall with silver.” She glances at Trevor, placing the cookie in her mouth and holding her hands up as if in placation when he raises an eyebrow at her. “It was harmless,” she assures him, her voice muffled around the cookie. “Just a little spell that gave everyone in the house temporary erectile dysfunction—just temporary,” she assures them when they both stare at her. “It lasted for like, a week.”

“Did you get your stuff back?” Adrian asks, frowning. 

“Oh, yeah. They’d stuffed everything into a dumpster a block or so away,” she says dismissively, waving a hand. “Sweet of you to ask, though,” she adds, winking at a now very flustered-looking Adrian. “But they were pretty mad about the little spell I’d casted, so it turned into this stupid little pissing contest. They’d do something, I’d do something. But eventually I got annoyed because I just wanted to be left alone, so I warded my apartment with silver and a couple of spells. They can’t get in.”

She shrugs, digging around in her pockets for something as she speaks. A second later she pulls out something long, slender and gold, holding it out expectantly. “Cigarette?”

They both shake their heads in unison, and she shrugs again, placing it in her mouth and passing a hand over the end. It ignites in a puff of blue smoke that smells strongly of incense, and she leans back, taking a long drag as she eyes them with something almost resembling suspicion. 

“So you’re not causing them any more trouble anymore?” Trevor asks, crossing his arms. “They’re idiots, but they’re persistent idiots.”

“I guess.” She picks at a stray thread on the end of her sawed-off hoodie sleeve, avoiding their eyes. “I mean, nothing’s happened for a week, so I assume they stopped. But my place is still warded. If you’d tried to break the door down”—she nods at Trevor—“then you’d have been stopped by my spells.”

“Good thing you showed up on time, then.”

She grins at him, and there it is again—that little dimple on her left cheek. “Yeah,” she says. “So is that it? That’s why you came here? The frat guys?”

“They made it sound like you were a total menace,” says Trevor with a shrug. “They do like to embellish things, especially when they’re drunk, but I thought it’d be worth checking out.”

“So am I?” She raises a teasing eyebrow. 

“Are you what?”

“Worth checking out.” She tilts her head, still smiling at him cheekily as she blows out a long trail of dark blue smoke. There are still a few cookie crumbs dusting her chin, which should ruin the whole flirty vibe she’d probably been going for, but for some reason it still works, better than it might have without. He decides on the spot that he likes this girl, even if she definitely ranks in one of the top spots on his his weirdest people list. Not many people he’s met have had the balls to flirt with both him _and_ Adrian, and even fewer people have actually made it work. But for some reason, this does. 

“Oh, I think so,” he says, unable to hide the grin that pulls at his lips as he turns to Adrian. “What do you think, Adrian? Worth checking out?”

Adrian is blushing again, and probably to hide it, he leans forward and snatches a ginger cookie, chomping on it studiously. “Mmf,” is all he says, looking steadfastly at a candle stuck to the floor beside him. 

“He thinks so too,” Trevor translates, turning back to a smirking Sypha. “Well, good,” she says. “I’d better be.” She stands, stretching her arms above her head luxuriously and cracking her knuckles. Trevor finds his eyes dipping to track the movement, catching the telltale lacy flash of a black bra beneath her hoodie, then hastily pulls his gaze back to Sypha’s face when she drops her arms with a plentiful sigh. 

“So is that it?” she calls as she pads out of the living room, turning her head to talk over her shoulder, her cigarette dangling loosely from between her lips. “Anything else you fine gentlemen might need from a humble Speaker?”

“I don’t think so,” Adrian says a little too quickly, swallowing the rest of his cookie. “Thanks so much for your time, Sypha.”

“It’s no trouble,” she says, flicking the stub that’s all that’s left of her cigarette away, sighing out one last mouthful of smoke. “Glad I could help. Just—don’t tell the frat guys this, they’ll just use it as an excuse to be even bigger dicks than they usually are.”

“Sure,” Trevor says, standing. “You try to stay out of trouble.”

“I’ll try to ‘try to stay out of trouble’, but no promises.” She grins, walking between them and towards the door purposefully. “Come on, I’ll walk you two out,” she says, and without waiting for a reply she kicks her feet into a pair of sparkly pink flip-flops that clash horribly with the rest of her outfit, yanking the door open. 

Five minutes and one very rickety elevator ride later they step out of the building and into the crisp California sunshine, Adrian dropping his shades back on and Trevor holding a hand up to shield his eyes against it as they both turn towards Sypha, who’s standing at the doorway. “Thanks again,” says Trevor, nodding at her. “Sorry if we bothered you—”

“It’s no problem at all,” she says, waving her hands good-naturedly. “If ‘bothering’ me means two hot guys stopping by my dilapidated little home then you can bother me any day.” She drops an eyelid in a lazy wink, knocking on the doorframe. “You know where I live. Come bother me whenever you like.”

Trevor can’t help but laugh; where the fuck had the frat guys found this girl? “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Great. I’ll see you around.” She starts to turn away, then holds up a finger and wheels back around, taking something out of her pocket and grabbing Trevor’s arm. “On second thought”—she wields the object she’d taken out of her pocket, which Trevor can now see is a sparkly blue permanent marker, one she whips the cap off of before lowering it over his arm—“here’s my number.” She scrawls it onto the inside of his forearm before he can make a single sound, then withdraws just as fast as she’d grabbed him. 

“There,” she says, admiring her handiwork for a moment before letting him go. “Bye then, boys.” She wiggles her fingers at them, pocketing her marker and sidling back into the building, whistling what Trevor thinks might be ‘La Vie En Rose’, only very, very out of tune. They stare after her until she disappears up the stairwell with one last flash of strawberry-blonde and blue. 

“Well,” Adrian says after a few minutes of just standing there and gazing after where Sypha had vanished, “that was… interesting.”

“Yeah,” Trevor snorts, turning away from the building, “that’s one way of putting it. Come on.” They move down the street again, back towards where Adrian’s car is parked. “She wasn’t what I expected.”

“I don’t think she’s ever what anyone expects.” Adrian takes Trevor’s arm, turning it over so he can see Sypha’s number scrawled across his skin in bright sparkly blue, with _SYPHA_ written above it with a little kissy face drawn beside it. He shakes his head, but he’s smiling anyway. The balls on this girl, he thinks. 

“You going to call her back?” Adrian asks, probably attempting to sound casual. He looks far too interested to succeed, and Trevor decides to take the bait. “Maybe,” he says with a careless shrug. “She’s cute, and she seemed nice.”

“She also seemed pretty interested,” says Adrian, still in that too-casual voice. It sounds downright false, and Trevor hides a smile. “Well, if she was, then I’m game.”

“Really?” 

“Sure.” He turns, squinting at Adrian’s disgruntled face against the sun. “Why so curious, Țepeș? Jealous?”

“I am _not_ jealous!” He kicks Trevor’s ankle as they walk, and Trevor laughs. “Well, you don’t have to be; she was flirting with both of us, you know.”

“Was she?” His brows draw together above his sunglasses, and Trevor rolls his eyes with a sigh. “For someone who people throw themselves at on a regular basis, you’re really fucking dense, you know that? Of course she was flirting with both of us.”

“Huh.” He hooks his fingers into his pockets, turning to look at Trevor, and he’s met, disconcertingly enough, with the sight of his own reflection in Adrian’s shades, unable to see Adrian’s eyes. “Did you mind?” he asks. 

“That she seemed down for a threesome?” he asks, and Adrian chokes. Trevor shrugs casually. “No, why?”

“ _Trevor_.” 

He laughs as they turn the corner, Adrian’s sleek black Aventador coming into view, incongruously parallel-parked between someone’s Ford Escort and a Sienna. “I was kidding,” he says as they draw up to it, Adrian fishing his keys out of his pocket. “Jesus.”

“So are you going to call her?” he asks again as they get into the car, slamming the doors shut as they do. Trevor drums his fingers against the armrest as Adrian carefully maneuvers his car out of the parking spot and revs the engine deafeningly, peeling away from the curb and onto the road. “I don’t know, maybe,” is all he says. “It’d be a nice change of pace, wouldn’t it?”

“That you can say that and mean it is a total and utter conundrum in and of itself.”

“Hey,” Trevor says, stretching as far as he can without hitting the roof of the car, “it’s the perks of bisexuality.”

Adrian snorts. “That’s your excuse for being unable to keep your dick in your pants?”

Trevor sighs, watching the city smear by outside; the streets are relatively empty since it’s a Sunday morning, and Adrian is driving at about a hundred and twenty miles an hour in the rare absence of traffic. “Yep,” he says. “But you can’t talk since you do the exact same thing, only worse.”

“And how is what I do worse?”

“Have you ever dated anyone, ever? Like, properly dated someone. With flowers and chocolates and movies and dates. An actual relationship with someone you like and who likes you, for longer than a week. Have you?”

Adrian says nothing, his grip on the wheel tightening till his knuckles blanch. Trevor nods, turning back towards the window. “That’s what I thought. You can’t just keep having flings forever, Țepeș. Something’s gotta give, you know?”

“What I choose to do with myself is my business, Belmont,” he says, and his voice is chilly. “Stay out of it.”

“Fair enough.” He holds up his hands, shrugging. “But when you run out of people to fuck and throw away and you finally feel how lonely you are, you might wish you’d listened to me.”

Adrian says nothing in reply, and the rest of the ride passes in silence.

* * *

He sits back with a frustrated sigh, throwing his hands up as the computer he’s sitting in front of freezes yet again, for what feels like the eightieth time in the last half an hour. The screen goes white, with a little infuriating buffering symbol turning round and round in the middle of the screen. 

The ancient computers in the library he usually sits at are all less than efficient if he wants to get work done, but the libraries on campus were all too crowded and too occupied, so he’d come here instead, and now he’s been staring at the buffering screen for going on five minutes. The library is mercifully pretty empty, with only eight or nine people inside, and so thankfully nobody is around to see Trevor flip the computer off and threaten to chuck it across the room under his breath. 

He pulls his phone out resignedly, sitting back and spinning his desk chair around as he scrolls idly through his contacts. His thumb hovers over Adrian’s for a few seconds—then he decidedly scrolls past it, giving a little shake of his head. The last time he’d seen Adrian was six days ago when they’d met Sypha, and _that_ little rendezvous had gone less than desirably. The sex had been pretty good, but then he’d been practically ordered out of Adrian’s apartment immediately after, and then he’d had the door slammed right in his face. 

He glances down at his arm, where Sypha’s number is still scrawled as clearly as if she’d written it there yesterday. No matter how hard he’d scrubbed at it all week it hadn’t faded, which probably meant she’d used a magic marker—a _real_ magic marker. Well, at least this way he can’t forget he has it, even if he’d already saved the number on his phone under her name. 

He’d liked her—and enough to actually consider asking her out, or at least just getting to know her better so that he can then ask her out with some pretext. And not the way he’s with Adrian—that relationship is way more unhealthy than he’s willing to admit—but in a proper way. She’s the first person he’s met since he’d started fucking Adrian who he actually wants to get closer to. And damn him if he isn’t going to do something about it. 

He hits call before he fully knows what he’s doing, and he winces as he brings the phone up to his ear, chewing on his thumbnail. It’s not like he can hang up now. 

Sypha picks up on the fourth ring. “This better be good,” her voice says, crackling through the speaker. “Who is this?”

“Hey, Sypha, it’s Trevor.” He squeezes his eyes shut, gnawing more voraciously at his thumb. “I came by your apartment with my—” He brings himself up short, eyes flying open. “Uh, with Adrian. We asked you about the frat guys—”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember you,” she says, sounding far more amicable now. “Be kind of hard to forget, right? It was only a few days ago, and you two were nice. So what can I do for you, Trevor?”

He glances at his watch—it reads 6:30 PM. Not too bizarre a time to meet, he hopes. “Are you busy right now?”

There’s silence for a few seconds. “No, why?” she asks after a pause, her tone unreadable. He sighs, steeling himself. This part is, for some reason, always the hardest for him. “Do you want to—”

“Meet at the bakery near the signal a block away from campus? They make a hell of a croissant. I’ll meet you there in ten,” she says, and he feels a sudden rush of gratitude and admiration in equal measure. “Yeah,” he manages. “Yeah, sounds great.”

“See you,” she says warmly, and hangs up a second later. He lowers his phone, blinking at it not without some astonishment. Maybe this won’t end up being a total disaster after all. He packs his things up and stands, and as he’s pulling his jacket on he glances down at his arm—when he starts, stopping dead and staring down at his forearm, where Sypha’s number has now faded entirely, not even a faint impression of the sparkly blue permanent ink left on his skin.

* * *

“Trevor! Over here!” 

He looks around, pulling his backpack up his shoulder as the door of the little bakery swings shut behind him, and spots Sypha sitting at a table near the middle, waving at him. He moves over to her, dropping his bag at the foot of the table as he slides into a seat opposite her. “Hey.”

“Hi.” She smiles at him. She looks so different from how she did when they’d first met that if he didn’t already know it was her he might have found it more believable that this is her sunny twin; her hair is combed and pushed away from her face with a hairband, stray russet curls escaping to coil at her temples, and she’s dressed in an oversized yellow turtleneck sweater that stops just shy of her knees and black fishnets. The overall effect of her outfit is slightly diminished by the threadbare New Balance sneakers she’s jammed her feet into, but even that looks incongruously cute.

She raises a coppery brow at him. “Where’s Adrian?”

He shrugs, his leg bouncing uncontrollably under the table. “No idea. At his apartment, maybe.”

Her gaze turns slightly quizzical. “Oh. I thought the two of you…”

“Live together? Nah. We’re not even dating.”

She looks surprised. “Wait, really?” She blinks. “Well, you had me fooled. Sorry if I assumed too much, it just… it can seem that way to someone who doesn’t really know what’s going on.”

“I mean, you’re half-right.” He shrugs. “We just hook up once or twice a week at each other’s places. Sort of like being friends with benefits, only we’re not really friends.”

Her cheeks flush visibly. “Oh.”

He shrugs. “Yeah.”

“So, want to grab a bite?” she asks after a second, leaning back and tilting her head. “I wasn’t kidding when I said these guys make a mean croissant.”

“Yeah, why not?” he says, and Sypha beams at him. She stands, saying something about how she’ll order for them and she’ll only be a minute and absolutely not, she insists on getting the food herself. She vanishes towards the counter and Trevor sits back with a sigh, thumbing his phone out and staring at Adrian’s contact again. He doesn’t know why he’s acting like this—it’s not like Adrian has to be not-angry at him to fuck him; so why is he worried? 

He puts his phone down hastily when Sypha gets back to the table with two ceramic plates balanced on one arm and two mugs of steaming espresso balanced on the other. He stands quickly to help her deposit everything on the table, both of them giggling at how clumsily Sypha had brought everything over. Once they’re seated again, plates of croissants and mugs of coffee set in front of them, he finally allows himself to get a proper look at her, reading her posture, her body language, the flutter of her eyelashes when she looks down and away from him to sip at her espresso, the careless way she reaches up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. 

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything when I called,” Trevor says, tearing off one end of his croissant and placing it in his mouth. Sypha was right; they’re delicious, flaky and practically melting in his mouth, the perfect balance of sweet, salty and sour. 

She waves a hand, shaking her head as she lowers her steaming mug. “Not at all. I was actually kind of surprised to hear from you so soon. Pleasantly so,” she adds, grinning. “It’s not every day I get a call back from someone like you.”

“Like me?” He raises a brow. 

She shrugs. “Well, you’re a junior, for one thing, so you’re basically one step below being totally and utterly inaccessible and out of my league in the college hierarchy. For another thing, you’re a hunter, and a Belmont, no less, which makes you totally and utterly inaccessible and out of my league in the underworld hierarchy too. And to top it off you’re sleeping with Dracula’s son, which must make your family very happy—”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Trevor mutters.

“—so all in all you calling me, a freshman Speaker magician, back was something like a distant fantasy.” She raises an eyebrow. “Although,” she goes on, more slowly, “I was sort of expecting a buy one, get one package deal.” She sips her coffee, raising a brow above the rim of her mug. “If my saying so doesn’t offend you.”

He snorts. “No, I get what you mean. He liked you, too.” 

She stares at him with open disbelief, her lips parting. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all.” He sits back, tapping his fingers on his knee. “Why, is that hard to believe?”

“Yes!” She’s laughing, putting her mug back onto the table, her cheeks flushed both from the heat of the coffee and from the sheer absurdity of the conversation they’re having. “Wow. I thought I freaked you guys out.”

“You did,” Trevor assures her. “But in a good way.”

“Well, I must have done something right.” She sighs. “But I cannot fail to notice that he isn’t here.”

“Like I said,” says Trevor, “Adrian and I aren’t exclusive, so…”

“Then ask him out,” Sypha says, as if this is obvious and also a very easy thing to do. 

He chokes on his coffee, coughing and spluttering as he emerges from behind his mug. “What? I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” She frowns at him. “You clearly like him. And he likes you, too. It’s pretty obvious, you know.”

“But we’re…”

“Just do the whole relationship thing, but in reverse order,” she says, fingers lacing around her mug as she leans forward, a glint in her eye. “First the sex, then the flowers and chocolates, then the asking out, then the getting to know each other.”

“And at the same time, going in the right order with you?” He puts his mug down contemplatively, frowning, and she blushes a little but shrugs. “If you’d like me there.”

“We would,” he says, automatically. “I mean, we like you.”

She blushes again. “You both met me one time.”

“Well, you were unpretentious enough that we liked you after one meeting.” He takes another bite of his croissant. “I’m used to taking these things quickly,” he goes on. “Unless you wouldn’t be comfortable…?”

“Oh no, not at all,” she says, waving him off and polishing off her own croissant. “I mean—I like you both too.” She clears her throat, hastily gulping more espresso, probably to hide her now very red cheeks. “I’ve never really… you know.” She takes in a breath. “Anyway. Maybe after you two sort out your shit, come find me.” She smiles at him, putting her mug down and standing up. She leans down and presses a soft little kiss to his cheek, then moves away towards the door, which swings shut behind her with a little jingle.

He sits there for a long time, long after the sun finishes setting and it gets dark. For the third time that night he finds himself staring at his phone, finger a millimeter away from calling Adrian’s number. He doesn’t know whether or not he wants to call him, or whether or not he even should. Because calling him now and doing what Sypha had told him to do—that is ending what they have now and starting something else, something that is infinitely more dangerous than what they have now. His finger hovers between the call button and the power button, the hard path and the easier one.

He takes a deep breath, making up his mind, and presses down.

* * *

“Shh, something’s coming,” Adrian hisses. 

Trevor and Sypha’s giggles trail off, but they’re both still grinning a little as they look around, Sypha clinging to one of Trevor’s arms and one of Adrian’s. She definitely can’t hold her liquor; she’s barely drunk half a bottle of vodka and she’s already rosy-cheeked and stumbling and insisting she’s fine and that they don’t need to help her. They’re walking innocuously down the seedier, darker streets of the city, where Trevor had gotten wind that a rogue magician who’d performed a half-assed necromancy spell had set his half-zombie creatures on the innocent civilians of the neighborhood before getting torn apart by one of them himself. 

“You sure?” Trevor mutters back, and Adrian nods, eyes narrowed as he peers into the dark. He’s also drunk enough for there to be a flush in his cheeks, but not much more than that; it takes a _lot_ more than that to get him drunk. Trevor is the only one who’s abstained till this point, needing to be the one to save his boyfriend’s and girlfriend’s asses when the time comes. 

“Okay, make noise,” he hisses, waving to Adrian and Sypha. “As much as you can.”

“Really?” Sypha looks absolutely delighted, and then without waiting for an answer she pulls them forward quicker, fingers biting into Trevor’s biceps. “Oh, to be a poor defenseless maiden with her two useless bodyguards traipsing through a zombie neighborhood,” she calls out loudly, her voice dripping mock helplessness. Trevor and Adrian exchange an amused glance as Sypha plows on. “A zombie neighborhood with… with many fearsome… zombies!” She clings tighter to both their arms, pretending to swoon and stumbling with a shriek instead. Adrian catches her, spinning her around as she laughs, righting herself. “Why thank you, kind sir,” she says, still pitching her voice loud enough for anyone—or anything—nearby to hear. “Now if only there were some _zombies_ to ruin this lovely night out with my lovely boys! Some nice gooey green zombies—”

As if on cue, something very green and _very_ gooey comes stumbling out of the shadows on their right with a low groan, eyes dull and lifeless, skin rotting off and smelling overpoweringly of—curry? 

Before he can let himself be weirded out by that last fact five more green gooey figures melt out of the shadows in front of them, rotting mouths gaping open to show perfectly normal white teeth inside. That magician really hadn’t done this properly, had he? “Okay, there’s five in total that are still alive… ish.” He draws his whip, taking a step back. Sypha lets go of his arm, wobbling a little as she raises a hand, grinning and summoning a ball of concentrated blue fire that pulsates in the air above her fingers like a disembodied heart, illuminating her face and the zombies in front of them. Adrian’s fingers twitch and the silver blur that is his sword materializes in front of him, the light from Sypha’s fire running off its edge. 

“Aim for the heart,” Trevor says, eyes darting around. “Don’t miss. These things can be pretty fucking fast, and they’re not fully undead just yet.”

“You make it sound hard,” Sypha says, her grin a flash of blue teeth in the light from her fire. “En garde, you curry-smelling abominations!” she shouts, and steps forward, flicking her ball of fire towards the nearest zombie, which gets incinerated on the spot. She shrieks with laughter and spins towards the next pair of monsters, hands blazing with fire and ice. 

“We’d better catch up before she finishes them all,” Adrian says, a grin tugging at his lips, and Trevor laughs, casting out his whip, and he and Adrian step forward together. 

Twenty minutes and a lot of green goo later the last zombie explodes into still more green goo, and once it does Sypha wheels around, grabs Adrian by the lapels of his coat, hauls herself up and kisses him full on the mouth, seemingly uncaring about the slime on his blade and on her clothes. Trevor waits patiently for them to finish, but then Adrian’s hands wander and then Sypha’s hands wander and then he has to cut in before they can start stripping each other right next to the pile of corpses that, even deader than they were before, smell like curry. God, that magician really had been an idiot.

Halfway to the car Adrian pushes Trevor up against the wall of a nearby building, fingers creeping beneath his shirt and up his chest, his tongue in Trevor’s mouth chasing away the lingering taste of blood and salt. Sypha’s hands soon join Adrian’s, and then his brain turns to mush and it’s all he can do to hold himself up, and he knows soon he probably won’t even be able to do that, either. Before he can find out, however, a light switches on above their heads and someone’s voice screams at them to go get a fucking room because people don’t want to hear them fucking in the street and then Sypha grabs their arms and pulls them, all giggling, towards the car again.

They slam the car doors behind them and Adrian starts to say something about how he will not let them fuck in his car, but then Sypha shuts him up with a kiss and a couple of deft fingers creeping below his belt and he doesn’t say another word after that, only their names, breathless and desperate. There isn’t much room in the backseat but they manage to wriggle under and over each other anyway, all their clothes shoved into the front seats. All he remembers of it is a jumble of harsh breaths and sweat-slicked skin and long golden hair tickling his back, tracing the tattoo that twines up Sypha’s side with his lips, tearing open a condom Adrian had fumbled out of his glove compartment (which Trevor intends on making fun of him for later), feeling Sypha’s nails scratch down his back and hearing his name drag itself from her throat on a moan. 

After, when they’re all sprawled across each other and breathing each other’s breath and tangled in each other’s limbs Sypha says, her voice muffled from where her face is pressed to Adrian’s shoulder, “I’ve always wanted to have sex in the Batmobile,” which manages to break the tension so incredibly well that when they all burst out laughing it’s partly out of relief. 

The drive back to Adrian’s place is mostly uneventful, unless Trevor is willing to count the bit where Sypha thwacked Adrian upside the head with her bra when he took the wrong turn and they ended up doubling back four miles to get back on the right street. When they finally do manage to get to Adrian’s place they’re all impatient again, and thankfully the elevator ride to the forty-fourth floor of his apartment building isn’t too short. They end up tangled together mostly naked on Adrian’s couch, his massive floor-to-ceiling windows allowing them a view of half the city spreading beneath their feet when they settle down again, tucked against each other. 

At long last, when they finally decide to drag themselves into Adrian’s bed all they have the energy left to do is pull the covers up before they fall asleep, Sypha’s head pillowed on Trevor’s shoulder and Adrian’s chest against his back, his arm around Trevor’s waist and his hand on Sypha’s hip. They fall asleep curled around each other, and it’s surreal and incredible and perfect, like a dream he doesn’t want to wake up from. 

And it’s all thanks to overhearing those drunk werewolf frat guys complaining about a local magician giving them trouble, but sometimes irony is the best sense of humor the world has to offer—and sometimes you just have to learn to live with that.

**Author's Note:**

> you can check out the moodboard i made for this fic [here.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3bd1eccd7d97b64fab91d9c282ced940/8a6b7f6bf9f1fed7-3e/s1280x1920/f28b95af2d342d3d034151e0917d76ff567de2ec.jpg)
> 
> i'd love a comment telling me what you all think!!


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